Road to Macaroons: Drying the almonds and Almond Flour

After sprouting it is CRITICAL to dry your almonds. Please, DRY THEM all the way!! Let me tell you a little story... So I didn't dry mine all the way. I put my oven on Warm and dried them for about an hour. So I put my almonds in my food processor, they became an oily MESS!! So I made Batch 1 of the marzipan potatoes but they were chunky and uck... 

So the next day, I dried them a bit more. Then into the food processor more went with powdered sugar because everyone says to do it so you don't get almond butter. Yup... I made marzipan again but I over whipped it and it was soon much smoother. Lesson: don't be shy it takes A LOT to make almond butter, it really does.

So back in the oven the almonds went on WARM. So I figured this was enough time so in the BLENDER (I don't have a lot of water at my disposal so I had to switch machines) they went. I put in a little bit of granulated sugar to add a bit of grit. Guess what? Still too oily. Angry by this point, the kids and husband going crazy, I lost my timidness. So up went the heat to 200F and I left the now sugary almond chunks in there for 2 hours. Well, that worked!!! Dry as a bone! They needed 200F in MY oven to actually dry out. See, you're on a time clock once you sprout almonds, they go bad really quickly. 

So back to my now clean blender and voila, almond flour!! You can see me sifting it through a metal strainer (required) and a silicone spatula (also required).

I had a bit left over that was bigger chunks, they actually get added into my (SPOILER ALERT) second batch of macarons.